Briefing: Security fears over plan to enrich uranium with lasers

IT'S pretty hard to disguise the fact you are enriching uranium, whether for use in nuclear power stations or bombs. Now a method that uses lasers to complete the process could make it more efficient - and easier to hide.

General Electric and Hitachi are joining forces to build a laser facility in Wilmington, North Carolina, powerful enough to produce more than 1000 tonnes of enriched fuel every year. They plan to use lasers that emit a narrow range of wavelengths that are absorbed by uranium-235 - the fissile isotope wanted in the fuel - but not by uranium-238. Excited U-235 can then be separated from the unexcited U-238.

But the benefits of laser enrichment - its efficiency and low power requirements - could also be its biggest drawbacks. Rogue states could find it easier to make atom-bomb fuel in secret as smaller facilities are needed for this method, making ...

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